


Autumn

by blanchtt



Series: Minific Prompts [2]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 22:57:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7776979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanchtt/pseuds/blanchtt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If she wants to get done in time to meet Sarah at her house before ten, she can’t exactly linger. Cosima sighs loudly and drags the rake through a swath of leaves, already feeling the burn in her arms - physical labor is not her strong suit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Autumn

**Author's Note:**

> Cophine + Z (make up your own) Autumn.

 

 

 

The bang of a screen door slamming shut nearby breaks her concentration, but Cosima continues working. There are always noises, no matter how calm the street - the roar of a truck passing by, the rattle of kids’ skateboards on the sidewalk, a group of moms walking barking dogs and pushing strollers. If she wants to get done in time to meet Sarah at her house before ten, she can’t exactly linger. Cosima sighs loudly and drags the rake through a swath of leaves, already feeling the burn in her arms - physical labor is not her strong suit. She should have roped Beth into helping but Beth was, annoyingly, at a Saturday morning track practice. 

It’s why, after a minute and several more half-hearted attempts at raking leaves into some sort of pile before the wind sweeps it all away, that the faint scent of cigarette smoke finally reaches her and has her start to smile and look up. The grass is still littered with leaves - shades of orange, brown, and yellow blend to make a beautiful mess that she’s just been tasked by her parents with cleaning up  _today, Cosima, seriously_ \- but Cosima stops, stands up straight, and lets her grip on the rake go a little loose, holding it at her side, and looks over toward the neighbor’s house, waving with her free hand. 

“Hey, Delphine!”

Cosima feels her stomach flip at the way Delphine, loitering on her porch and looking very much lost in thought, startles at the sound of her voice and looks up, eyes wide, and then upon seeing her reaches up to take the cigarette from between her lips and waves back, smiling widely. 

_Ask her out,_ Alison had said excitedly at lunch yesterday, when Cosima had finally let the abridged events of Thursday Night slip, and that was the final push she’d needed.  _It’s pretty much in the bag,_ Sarah had agreed, stealing a fry off her plate and sealing the deal. If anyone could read people, for better or for worse, it was Sarah.  _She’s way into you, Niehaus._

Cosima watches as Delphine walks down the stairs of her front porch, across the Cormier’s nearly manicured and leaf-free lawn, and over to the low fence that separates their properties. Cosima heads closer, careful not to trip over the rake she drags after herself. 

“Wanna help me out?” she asks in what she hopes is a particularly charming manner. 

Hands come to rest on the low fence, revealing blunt and black-painted nails, and Delphine leans up against it, cigarette held between index and middle finger as she watches her cooly. But her smile gives her away, one that shows Delphine’s quite pleased with herself as she asks, pronunciation careful, “What will you give me if I do?”

“Your American is getting really good,” Cosima admits with a grin, because Delphine had said that there  _was_  a difference between American English and English English, in words and in phrases, and maybe there was something to be said for that. If Delphine wants tit for tat, she’s definitely not complaining - meeting Sarah’s just been moved to the back-burner.  _Sorry, dude._  “And it’s a surprise,” Cosima answers, mentally congratulating herself on a what she hopes is a quick and witty response.

“ _Une surprise_?” Delphine repeats with unabashed interest, smiling, and Cosima revels in the fluid words, the slightly throatier quality of her voice as Delphine speaks her native tongue, because  _wow_. Delphine flicks her cigarette free of lingering ash and leans in closer, gripping the fence, and Thursday Night comes rushing back to Cosima in the delicate scent of her perfume and the overwhelming closeness of her - all of them in her room, minus Beth, picking bits and pieces off the brownie and shooting the shit, Delphine sitting next to her, head tilted against hers and not at all moving away from the arm she had slipped around her waist, all confirming the little glances Delphine had been been throwing at her since showing up three weeks ago at the start of junior year. And now Delphine’s voice is conspiratorially low as she asks, “Like one of your brownies?”

Cosima grins as a gust of wind blows by, and Delphine reaches up with her free hand to push curls back out of her face. Cooking, as her mother was loathe to admit, was not her forte. She could burn cereal, and her parents had stopped asking her to help with dinner years ago. But baking - that came easy. Delphine’s not the first person to think she’s more than decent at it, although she is the only one Cosima would willingly give brownies away to, other than Sarah.  _Oh, Cos, you’ve got it bad_ , she can hear Sarah say, and agrees. Cosima reaches up, pushes her glasses back by the bridge with a fingertip and watches Delphine watch her. 

“So you liked those, huh?” 

“Yes,” Delphine admits, and then, with one uncertain tilt of her shoulder, the worried bite of a lip, she loses some of that oh-so-easy cool that’s managed to bowl over everyone at school, takes a breath, and there are the doe-eyes again as she says, rushed, “But not as much as your company.”

Wow. Okay.

_Because, Thursday Night, after everyone had left and it was just her and Delphine and Sarah, and after Sarah had then quickly excused herself with an obnoxiously dramatic wink, and it was just her and Delphine - with the two of them alone in her room, with a silence and a stillness that carried weight and promise, Delphine had leaned in, and then stopped, uncertain, the pad of her thumb brushing softly against her cheek, before Cosima had met her halfway._

In the giddy silence that follows, in which Cosima understands she’s supposed to say something other than  _kiss me again, please_ , but can’t, Delphine looks away suddenly, takes a last drag at the stub of her cigarette, thinks with narrowed eyes, and exhales, speaking around a cloud of smoke before Cosima can say anything. 

“Let me get our rake. Don’t move.” 

Delphine walks away briskly, and Cosima’s not sure she could move if she wanted. She’s fairly certain the only thing holding her up on her weak knees is the rake she realizes vaguely that she’s still holding. “Wasn’t planning on it!” Cosima calls after her.

It’s not long before Delphine joins her in her yard, now ready to spend more than one smoke break outside and wearing a thicker jacket, and Cosima points to the large oak tree in the middle of the yard before they get started.

“So,” she says, before Delphine does anything. “Tree’s in the middle.” She draws an imaginary line from the house to the tree to the sidewalk, one that bisects the yard. “That side’s yours,” she explains, pointing. “And this side’s mine. Whoever cleans up fastest gets the surprise. You up for a little competition?”

Delphine gives her a look, one that tells Cosima she might very well lose and then thank her for the pleasure of it. “Yes!”

And, yeah, physical activity is most definitely a Beth thing. She’s an indoor girl, and raking leaves takes about all the effort and coordination Cosima has. She’s got a corner of her side raked and in a pile before she looks over, and holy shit, Delphine’s working with an industrious speed, face set in concentration and a third of her side already raked, and Cosima is going to lose,  _bad_. 

Cosima thinks, plan quickly forming, and rakes her way casually over to the imaginary divide. Delphine is preoccupied, and Cosima throws a glance at her one last time before she reaches out, kicks a good amount of her leaves onto Delphine’s neat side surreptitiously. It’s not much, but maybe enough to stall her. She can lose, but it doesn’t mean Delphine has to annihilate her. Who knew the girl had a penchant for yard work?

But as luck would have it, Delphine turns at the exact moment that Cosima decides one more go won’t hurt, right as she’s in the middle of kicking more leaves onto her side.  “Cosima!” Delphine laughs, resting a hand on her hip as leaves scatter across wet grass. “You brat!”

“Desperate times, desperate measures!” Cosima grins and stick her tongue out against her better judgement, and Delphine reaches down quickly, grabs a fistful of leaves from one of her piles, and throws them with little success at Cosima, lips pressed together in a moue of mock annoyance. None of the leaves reach Cosima and instead flutter to the ground in a shower of color - on Delphine’s own clean side, no less, Cosima cannot help but notice with a smirk - but it’s the gesture that counts. 

Cosima lets her rake drop to the lawn, reaches down, and gathers up an armful of leaves, slick with last night’s rain and earthy-smelling, and starts toward Delphine, whose eyes widen. “You sure you’re fully prepared for a leaf fight?”

“If you’re afraid I’m going to win,” Delphine answers confidently, grabbing more leaves off the ground in preperation, “Then yes!”

It’s how, ten minutes later, the yard looks  _worse_  than it did before her parents had asked her to rake. There are bits and pieces and whole leaves scattered everywhere: all over the lawn, on the walkway, in the gutters, fluttering on the windshield of her mom’s car parked nearby, swirling into the nooks and corners of the porch each time the cold breeze kicks up. There is no remaining sign of Delphine’s neat piles or her own sloppier ones, and it’s going to take a hell of a lot longer to clean up than it would have before.

They sit on the damp grass in a halo of leaves, panting from exertion and laughter, and Cosima watches as Delphine braces her palms against the ground, as she tilts her head back, looking up at the grey and overcast sky. They’ve shed coats and scarves, and now as they sit Cosima feels the cold settle back in, although Delphine hardly seems to notice in her jeans and simple, pretty button-up.

Berkeley’s fall was like a spring day in Paris, Delphine had mentioned once. But if Delphine’s used to walking around without layers, Cosima is not. It’s with Thursday Night in mind and almost no worry about how it will all play out that Cosima shifts, scooting next to Delphine, and sits close enough for their shoulders to touch, for her to reach out and nudge Delphine’s ankle with the toe of her sneaker.

Delphine turns toward her, and Cosima just about dies as Delphine takes her hand, threads their fingers together, and drags their clasped hands into her lap. “So,” she asks, and Cosima envies the smooth, unwavering quality to her words because,  _fuck_ , her hand is in Delphine’s lap and how is she supposed to string two words together like this? “Did I win the surprise?”

“Uh, yeah,” Cosima says, waving her free hand through the air nonsensically to buy herself time. “Yeah, you sure did. Pretty sure I disqualified myself by cheating, anyway,” she adds with a crooked grin. 

She’s not sure where to take the conversation next -  _I’ll bring you something later tonight_ , which is true regardless of how this goes - but that seems to have been decided for her, because Delphine bites her lip, leans a little closer toward her, and they’re little things Cosima has seen her do since she met her in bio class three weeks ago and fell head over heels for her, and they are the little things she did Thursday Night, the two of them practically twined together casual as you please in front of all her friends, and they are the little things that are  _working_  on her right now. Sarah’s voice in her head screams,  _Go for it, geek monkey!_ and Sarah has, despite the amount of time she spends in detention, never steered her wrong.

Cosima clears her throat, eyes flicking away briefly, and catches a previously-unseen flash of orange amongst Delphine’s hair. A leaf, caught up in a curl. She motions at it abruptly, free hand moving through the air and stumbling over her words. “You’ve got a, uh - ”

Delphine only laughs softly, close, thumb running slowly over her own in a way that is highly distracting and the total opposite of soothing, and Cosima thanks the entire Greek pantheon of gods that Delphine apparently finds her babbling endearing. “What is it?”

Rather than speak, Cosima leans toward her, reaches out for the leaf caught in Delphine’s curls. It brings her dangerously close to Delphine’s pretty face, particularly since she has several inches on her which are apparent even when sitting down. Hoping that Delphine can’t hear how hard her traitorous heart is pounding, Cosima plucks the leaf out of her hair, just in time for Delphine to take advantage of her closeness and press a kiss to her lips. 

It’s mostly quick and mostly sweet, because they  _are_  sitting on her front lawn, after all - but Cosima can’t help but linger and, shit, Delphine is not only a fan of tongue but a freakin’  _connoisseur_.

When she finally drags herself away she sits back, stunned and holding a leaf between thumb and forefinger dumbly as Delphine says, a bit needlessly since it’s clear the kiss more than sufficed, “ _Merci, Cosima_.”

“You didn’t help me for the brownies,” Cosima confirms, the giddiness back and unable to keep from smiling, and Delphine shakes her head, curls sweeping left and right.

“No,” Delphine agrees, and Cosima watches as her cheeks go pink, as she unclasps their hands and wipes her palms on the thigh of her jeans in a move that Cosima has herself performed before - did she, geek monkey extraordinaire, just actually manage to make Delphine Cormier nervous? “Although that would be the cherry icing on top.”

“It’s not - ” Cosima starts with a laugh, and drops it. “Never mind.” She tosses the leaf over her shoulder, lets it flutter to the lawn that she still has to rake but who cares, and reaches out, a hand curling around on the nape of Delphine’s neck, and finds only matching eagerness as she tugs her close, smiling almost too hard to kiss her properly. “Come here.”

But, like, only  _almost_.

 

 

 


End file.
